Seven Years Later

I believe it was seven years ago that I saw Eddie Izzard's stand-up comedy for the first time, on the supernaturally funny DVD Dress to Kill. It's taken that long for things to line up properly with him on tour where I live and me hearing about it in time to get tickets, but tonight I finally got to see him live in his newest concert, Stripped.

I'm pleased to say that he is just as funny and enjoyable in person as he is on DVD. Sure, those concert films may be only the "best bits" culled together, but he's still very funny in the "parts that wouldn't make the final cut."

That said, this current tour was overall his weakest in a while. I would never curse him by measuring everything he ever does to Dress to Kill -- that was really lightning in a bottle, the best of the best. But Glorious and Circle also delivered a lot of laughs, and I'd say this material -- though good -- didn't quite measure up to those. Perhaps this is because with his television series, The Riches, he hasn't been doing stand-up as regularly now as he used to be.

Or... perhaps he was just as funny tonight, but I wasn't able to enjoy it because the theater in which he performed was hotter than the Seventeeth Circle of Hell. Yes, seventeeth; hell didn't have Circles deep enough to match this heat until it expanded to make room for Denver's Paramount Theater. I think my clothes were melting by the end of it.

I did marvel, though, at two particular facets of Eddie Izzard's comedy. He's displayed them both again and again, but they're still a delight to see.

First, he continues to find new avenues into areas he's discussed before. He likes to joke about organized religion, for example. But every time he's out touring with a new concert, he has brand new material about it unlike what you've heard before. Hell, tonight, he even talked about Noah's Ark -- a subject he covered at length in Glorious -- and had some fifteen minutes of hysterical and entirely new material about it.

Secondly, he always works very well with a crowd. He veers off his planned jokes frequently, exploring a random improvisation if the mood strikes him. If it winds up making the audience laugh, he'll often be laughing right along with them. If it leads to a dead end, he'll typically get a big laugh out of acknowledging what a screw-up it was, then deftly get back on track.

Whether it stacked up to past performances or not, it was still a great evening of comedy. If you've never seen Eddie Izzard on DVD, I suggest you give him a try. And if you like that and haven't seen him in person, I strongly suggest you start paying attention to his tour dates.